Captivity Stunt
by pozarpel
Summary: Defeat and fear are kind of new. Kougyoku's gross disposition towards being a stupidly good person? That's old news.
1. carnage crow

It's dark, dark, dark, like a void, and all his ears and all his eyes have left him. Long gone. Good-bye!—no, bad bye. Judal has never had a good bye in his entire wild life, except for those that were followed by the sweet release of death (sweet release for him, death for the other unlucky bastard.) But alas, no more of that either!

Judal has no ears to whisper in anymore, that's the telling thing. Nobody dares to listen—his words aren't words so much as fatal desert-crawlers slipping off a desperate tongue, venom seeping between clenched teeth. They turn away like his words have sinister power, and maybe they did, once. Rather, his knowledge is the issue.

Nobody listens, but Judal knows just as well as Aladdin, as well as anyone the rukh has ever lent itself to. He thinks he might even know better, when it comes to things like death and ruin. In most cases, there's no end, it doesn't stop, it loops. It loops, and sometimes it comes right back to him. Contrarily, it's not as pleasant as they think.

He never spared much thought to it, but he supposes there was always some small awareness, a murmur, a twinkling at the side of his vision, a brush of warm energies in cold places. His family had been there all along. The thought makes him just-nearly-mad with carefully veiled shame, quaking anger. His innocent family, revealed only in happy nightmares, had seen for themselves every foul atrocity of war executed at Judal's ecstatic fingertips.

In their world, there's no such thing as 'death,' not really. His understanding is visceral but beyond rudimentary—there's the great flow, an everlasting cycle, a home and a peace. His arrogant mistake had been seeing it only as a source of power. More than power, it was glorious, esteemed, precious life.

His family was waiting, in a sense, and they were sickeningly happy in those forms, enough that Judal didn't have to feel a damn thing for their sake. They were joy and he was self-satisfied misery. He didn't belong to them anymore, if he had ever. He didn't even belong to the great flow anymore. The rukh which had marked and loved him from birth slipped through his hands like sand in a sieve. He was barren and undeserving and he was going nowhere, returning nowhere, and

he was very, very afraid.

Every loose spirit went to that great big glorious home. But, in life, Judal had fought and fussed and decayed so much that there was no home for him anywhere. He'd broken off. The substance of his soul was not vigor, not the energy of creation. Judal was destruction and he didn't know how not to be. There was no sick, lurching thrill in something as dull as _home_.

But lacking one at the hour of his death was cause enough for pitiful thoughts. And he knew his death was imminent, soon. Too soon but not soon enough. For not having a home, Judal had already built up an exceptional stock of things to lose. His empire, his caretakers, the witches and the wizards who made him what he was. It only took one war to strip them all away, and the obvious finale was the tenuous remnant of his tainted life. They'd wipe him out like the last stain.

All this time playing a great game, and Judal didn't know how to lose. It was too surreal a feeling, death bearing upon his shoulders this way. He might actually begin to understand his victims. He had, at least, made it somewhat quick for them… sometimes, if he was feeling arbitrary mercy that day…

Executions, though? On so thorough and so hating a scale? What chance of mercy lay there?

Missing his wand was like missing security. Missing security was like missing his advantage. There wasn't much else to miss. In the hours before death, there wasn't much else to consider. Terrified as he was, there was little to gain in amnesty—there wasn't much else to live for. He didn't even want the mercy. Exile was pointless. Pointless, pointless, pointless.

He heard footsteps. A single set. He knew them too well.

For her to come down unattended like that, they really must underestimate him in his state—or they overestimate his attachment and his goodness. Those proportions are impossible! Or maybe they're right. Judal just turned his back.

His position was so:

Judal himself was kept on one of the isles off of Sindria's coast, as far removed from paradise as he could get without thinking of the tantalizing possibilities of destroying it. The cell was admittedly nice, guarded by charming men who absolutely couldn't stand a chance against him if he was at full strength. But he was wounded pretty badly, almost to the verge of death before being yanked back.

He didn't have anything to channel magic with, which might not have been so much of a problem if not for the wounds and the way the rukh had chosen to flow against him. Even in a prison, so close to Sindria it seemed like there wasn't much black rukh around at all—it made the air stifling.

Al-Sarmen was obliterated, his Kou Empire was falling apart without that woman at its center; most of his king candidates had been defeated—ah, except for two. The ladies. Their betrayal was somewhat expected. From a pacifist like Hakuei, absolutely. From a fighter like Kougyoku, not so much.

"Um," she said. "I…"

"Um," Judal derided her. "What? Use your words." He threw his hands up, still not facing her, planted in his seat on the ground like a petulant child. No, not quite right—he was a carnage crow with his talons on the shelf, something wild but feckless. When they looked at him, he saw disgust and fury, which he was more than fine with, sure. But there was also mockery and pity, and those were things he could not accept.

Kougyoku pitied the angry, brooding carnage crow with all her heart. She always had.

Maybe that's why he was so mean to her. And why he could never cut her off no matter how _annoying—_

"I just came to visit you," she grumbled, moving closer to the bars. Judal didn't turn, but he half expected to see her in Sindrian green. Traitor. Traitor. He couldn't believe it, but the thought was hurting. Judal had dealt with traitors his entire life. But in the form of his princess, it _hurt_.

It hurt really bad.

"Don't." he said, staring hard at the wall. He was feeling more and more disadvantaged with each passing second. He wanted her to leave and not come back. The air stunk of regression. "This isn't a 'visit,' how dumb can you get?"

"Are you really in a position to be making fun of me?" That wasn't anger, that was exasperation. He shrunk in on himself, crossing his arms.

"What are you gonna do, kill me? I'm always in a position to be making fun of you."

"You're not better than me!"

"Hey now, when did I say that? I can be fair! I lose! You win. Go away."

"I didn't come all this way just to hear that." He heard a screech and flinched, then realized it was Kougyoku pulling up a chair next to the bars. Ah. So she intended to stay a while. He began to turn his face, but stopped himself to stare straight ahead again. "And before you say anything, no one sent me. Ka Kobun's not even here. I had… to sneak out."

Judal knotted his hands in his pantscloth, a memory spurring at the fringe of his thoughts.

"The window trick?" he asked softly. He taught her that.

"Yes." She sounded sad, then. The exhilaration of escaping palace walls had probably worn off with age—she could do what she wanted in almost every capacity now. But for some reason, the idle conversation grounded him a bit. He turned himself around, barely able to see Kougyoku in the dim light of dark morning. She was rustling through something.

"I brought you peaches," she said, and Judal felt a little embarrassed that she'd even think to do that. She really was a stupid girl, or at least, she clung to her delusions of friendship with onerous tenacity.

"Oh, save it." He leaned over, settling his cheek on an upheld hand as he stared long and hard at her. "I'd rather you fuck off—what are the chances of that?"

With all-encompassing calm—not a shudder out of place—Kougyoku folded her hands in her lap, offering a wan smile. It caught him off guard, but he didn't speak straight away. In any case, he couldn't.

"You don't look so good, Judal-chan."

Her voice was… quivering? He'd heard this before. He'd caused it, in some cases. And he'd always taken some sick pleasure in it. There was a superficial annoyance—she kept dodging confrontation and supplanting it with concern—but moreover, he was curious. Her shaking voice made him feel sadness, too.

The entire situation was maddening. If it was inevitable, he should be killed straight away rather than suffer through bumbling last minute regrets. He always thought—no, he never thought about his own death. On the promise of his status as a magi and the assurance of an entire empire, he'd thought he'd just… live forever, and never worry about a thing.

He drew in on himself a little more.

Kougyoku and he shared a fixation on beauty and style and good looks, to some degree. To be seen in some other state was bringing him the most immediate and burning shame yet. As a response, he rolled his shoulders back and faced her head on and didn't care. Apathy came so smoothly. He sneered at her. "You couldn't have expected me to after all that. Can we skip the pleasantries, as you often insisted?"

She rolled her shoulders back too.

"I actually came with good news—"

"Good news for me or for you—ah, I got it!" He pounded his fist in his palm with a smile. "There's a wedding! Sinbad decided you were so lovely a traitor that he finally decided that he wanted to marry you—or, no, was it Aladdin's boy? That Balbadd prince?" He couldn't call him pathetic anymore, but at least he could pretend not to care for even the name. On the battlefield, Balbadd's third prince had fought with such intrepid vigor, it was hard to believe he was the same small fry Judal first remembered.

"Stop trying to make me angry," Kougyoku snapped, and he knew that unique frustration and hurt were absolutely boiling under her soft skin. He used to love that. But he was tired, and now he hurt her not for the sake of his amusement but because he saw little else to do but cling to old routines. It just steered him more towards the edge.

"Why?" he asked, a leer, a challenge flare. She couldn't stand his haughtiness around her. She glared. She rattled the cage bars like she was the desperate captive.

"Because I'm trying to help _you, _you idiot_!"_

And in a way, she supposed she was. He took in the sight of her miserable red face, the savage swipes at her tear-pricked eyes, that ridiculous pitiful sniffling. For the first time either of them could remember, he didn't laugh.

* * *

Maybe a two shot? I'll go back to writing JuKou stories that aren't all ANGST AND SADNESS after this one I swear. Lately the art output has been so friggin adorable!


	2. canary bride

"I'm not supposed to be crying," she sniffed. Her sorrowful blubbering was reverberating around the prison. It struck a loose chord in Judal—he felt his muscles go slack, his expression soften. Kougyoku was such a _crybaby, _and nobody would know it with that frosty front of hers. He taught her that, too.

But around him, the curtains went down and the show was over. He could see through her like he could see through most people of her sort, and he was trained to pounce on every slip-up, every chink, every weak point. But sometimes, she was foolish enough to just… bare it to him. No struggle. No fight. It was endearing. Sincerity bred sincerity, too, surely but slowly. It was nothing short of sorcery, but at the moment his greatest wish was to do away with that glamourless tear-streaked face.

When she removed her damp sleeves from her eyes, he was standing at the bars, gripping them and peering. Judal had a gaze that captivated or destroyed. Kougyoku, for all her chinks and slip-ups and weak points, found nicer things there, too. A welcome-home in a place it had no business being. To see such soft spots in Judal was a dangerous practice, it never had a chance.

But here they were, at the end of his world, face to face with only crusty iron bars as barrier. Well, that was the only immediate physical barrier. Things would always be a bit more complicated than at first glance.

Judal was leaning, his forehead tipped against the metal as he looked down at her. His expression was comforting. It was one of those rare ones. Something human, something precious. Kougyoku stared back until she cracked a flimsy, genuine smile—he leaned back when she laughed a little into her hand.

"You really do look terrible."

"Yeah, yeah, judge all you'd like, laugh it up—you're here to help me?" He wasn't looking at her now, eyeing the corner of the cell with folded arms and a jutted jaw. He considered her words. Kougyoku was an apt liar, adroit in deceit, but not to him. He was the king of deceit.

And he didn't see any reason she'd _lie_. It was more a mystery than a hope at this point. He composed himself quickly, rubbing at his face and coughing into his hand.

"Oh. Yes. I—I asked them to let you go."

He didn't like the sound of that. He snapped at her, an indistinct despair present in the bearing of his body and the angle of his tone, the inflection of scathing sarcasm.

"What, and they just said _sure fucking thing_? Oh, Kougyoku, you did it! All of our problems are solved!"

"Stop that." She closed her eyes, forcing her voice into prim, sharp format. "You are just being nasty because you are afraid."

"Sure, tell yourself that," Judal bit out, but the beat of hesitation might have proved her point. He considered it. It was a shameful possibility. He settled down a bit, wary and dissatisfied with his supposed savior.

"They never planned to… to kill you," she said.

"What a lie," he snorted. "Sure, they'll tell you that because they think you might flip out and cry otherwise. Sinbad wants your cooperation. But it's not true."

Kougyoku carefully constructed the effect of her next words. When they came, they moved like a bomb, bounded off the walls, something livid and passionate.

"Why might I cry?" she demanded, pushing herself to her feet. "Of course I'd cry over you. All this time and you don't get it! You are terrible, horrid—don't smile!-" His expression broke uneasily at that, and she continued in a heated rush. "You are awful, you've always been awful, but it's not all your fault and anyone with a _heart and half a brain _could see that." She paused to catch her breath, holding her hand up for silence like a furious little queen. He felt the corner of his mouth quirk.

"I can't tell you how many times I've thought about it, Judal. If you were you in some other life—" she shut her eyes tight, straining to stifle tears again. "You wouldn't be hurting so bad, and you wouldn't do the things you do."

"That's not true," he sighed. In a way, it was just what he wanted to hear, and just what he wanted to fight. "Don't make me out to be one of you."

"It is true! You would still be a fat-headed, vain, inconsiderate, aggressive… a…_asshole_, but— but you wouldn't be so, so…"

"Twisted?" He smiled. He liked the sound of ill-mannered language on her tongue.

"Yes," she finished, face creased and solemn. "In another life, you would have been happy."

"I was happy."

"You were a monster."

"Ah, so you agree. I was pleased to be one! So off with my head, right?" He made the appropriate slicing motion and guillotine sound effect, laughed in an uproar that made his head hurt. He held his gut, the site of the wound, which began to throb more in protest. Across from him, Kougyoku seemed thoroughly displeased, and furthermore, _fierce _about it.

"No!" she stomped her foot. "Not off with your head! You don't get it! They were never going to kill you—"

"Oh, shut up! Shut up, you're so damn innocent. You've seen the world but you don't _understand _it. You've seen war and death and murder, ligaments torn and ripped and flesh wiled away to the gruesome corpse-bone. Haven't you?"

"I—"

"Then why do you insist on believing in things? When you're so obviously wrong? How are you not dead?"

He hadn't noticed, but he'd raised his voice—he felt embarrassed, then, for having been so incensed about this. But the frustration had always been there. Kougyoku was so _dense_. She was incorruptible. Her life had been desolate, lonely—she'd been used—just like him!—but she was so far removed from despair and depravity that he couldn't bear it.

"Let's not make this about me," she said at length, once she'd recovered the poise of her voice. "Everything is always about you, Judal."

"Don't fuckin' sass me," was what he said, still seething about it. "No, this is about you. This is about how dumb you can be without realizing it. Coming here, to begin with."

"I'm not going to get in trouble. I just had to come talk to you." She focused her sights on her slippered feet, frowning. She was out of place amongst all this grime. He narrowed his eyes at her.

"We're not friends."

"So you say," she responded, a verbal shrug off. He clicked his tongue in irritation.

"This is not the reunion you were hoping for, I bet."

"It never is with you," she said with that same sad smile. "I had to tell you that I am working on getting you out of here."

"…Why would you do that? Why would anyone do that? Friends or no, I'm a danger. More than your brothers for sure."

"Cease your suspicions, they are getting so old. I believe that you can be helped."

"I don't want to be helped," he said.

"If you die like this—"

"I know."

"You can't possibly think Al-Sarmen will come back for you."

"I know that!"

"Then why—"

"I can't be helped! I can't! You're so stupid, do you actually think there's some seed of kindness in me or something?" Before she could speak a word, he went on, his angry words knotting tightly together and ringing in the air.

"You're making me sick, Kougyoku. Do you think I was nice to you for the sake of friendship or for the sake of niceties or anything like that? Because I'm secretly a good person? No. No, I'm not a good person. This is who I am. I _used_ you, you idiot, just like Sinbad is using you now—and—and you don't even realize it! It's probably the most sad, pathetic thing I've ever seen!"

He couldn't tell if his words were smarting her. When she flicked her gaze at him again, chin jutted in defiance, well- it was just her routine determination. "Do you think I don't know that?" she demanded. "Everyone—_everyone_—my brothers and my father and Ka Kobun and Sinbad and even you, Judal. I know that. I know that you all have your agendas and you have no time for genuine feelings for someone like me, I've always known that. But— I don't think that… you really like to hurt me."

"Then you're wrong! Great rukh, let's not even talk about this. I mean it when I say go away, you senile hag. Do you hear me?"

She smiled at him. He felt queasy.

"You always tease me," she murmured, "And you may have used me, but I don't mind. I did not feel bad around you. You were very… important… to me. And that's why, you're my friend and I won't abandon you. Do you understand?"

"No." A pause. "But I don't care anymore. If you really think you can get me out, then I invite you to go ahead and try it. I don't care."

"I'm going to fix you," she declared, and he just felt numb. He felt more imperfect than he ever had. He dipped his head tiredly against the bars again, eyelids shut tight.

"Fine," he ground out, as if he was in pain. "Fine. Make me an idiot like you. Make me blind. It might be interesting." He couldn't say what frightened him more. He couldn't tell her he had nothing to live for anymore, couldn't tell her he might not be satisfied so easily. He had a gaping greed and too many sick desires to clear away from nothing. But he didn't want to tell her it was hopeless, either, so maybe… maybe there was something left for him to see, too.

"You won't be stubborn?"

"Ugh."

"I'm trying to help you."

"You said that already."

"Because I care about you."

"Right."

"Judal."

"What? Don't just say my name and leave it."

She seemed to reconsider it, her lips set in an uplifted smile. She really was out of place.

"…No, it's nothing. Just, think about it, okay? I will definitely, definitely help you." Judal thought perhaps she was more perceptive than he thought. Maybe she was referring to more problems than his death sentence. Or maybe that was what they called wishful thinking, for the first time in his life.

"We'll see," he said testily, but without any underlying conviction to strengthen the words. She took that in and smiled, nothing brilliant but certainly real, because everything Kougyoku felt was always so real and so concentrated, maybe enough to burn through to someone else. She turned her head to the side, towards the one source of light in the dark halls, and stood up, dusting off her dresses.

'  
"I should be going back now," she explained. "Don't forget about it, though. I will be working tirelessly for your sake, so maybe if you try really hard, you can have some nice words for me next time."

"Fat chance," he scoffed. He couldn't bring himself to say anything. No mentions of appreciation would suffice, because all she'd really done was stir him up and get him confused just when he was hankering down to resignation. For whatever reason, he was less ready to accept his fate. He was also less… frightened. He had absolutely no idea how she did that.

"I'll be back soon," she promised, and there was the conviction that he lacked. "Bye, Judal." She gave him a paltry little wave, turned, gathered her skirts up, and scurried around the wall and up the stairs as if pulling an escape. He watched her go, finding her actions incomprehensible. But it was an OK goodbye, as far as goodbyes go. He hadn't realized it until she came idling into the cellblock, but… he'd missed her. He'd actually missed her. And in that disquiet lay a spark of a chance at life.

* * *

(( wow still sorry this is balls I just wanted to finish it really badly cries a lot

thanks for reading though, hope you liked it! henceforth I will be endeavoring to fix my style errors like these bigass inelegant descriptions and the lack of working imagery or stylistic prose

so yep

next is probably a dangan ronpa fic because I'm a bandwagon jumper))


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